Catherine Boone

Catherine Boone is Professor of Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on questions of comparative political economy, and especially on questions of institutional change and economic development. She is author of Property and Political Order: Land Rights and the Structure of Conflict in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2014); Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice (CUP 2003), Merchant Capital and the Roots of State Power in Senegal (CUP 1993), and many articles. She convenes the MSc program in Africa Development at the LSE. Her current research centers on questions of regional competition, market integration, and land politics in African countries, with attention to regional tensions fueled by economic inequalities and rising land conflict. She is PI and project leader for the UK Economic and Social Research Council Project on "Spatial Inequalities in African Political Economy" (2018-2022).